Another update and possibly a solution for some case where posts were not properly deleted. Seems I jumped the gun on this and the restores haven’t been intentional - at least not in this particular case.
There is a limitation in the popular Powerdelete that apparently prevents mass editing. Here is a link to a new version with a build-in delay and some other alternatives:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/145fico/comment/jnl4xmr/
There are other reported cases where manually deleted post reappeared or other scripts have been used, so this doesn’t solve all issues but explains how posts that were both edited and deleted withPowerdelete weren’t properly deleted and reappeared after subs went back live.
Update: As some have pointed out: the restores can be rollbacks from the server issues or post haven’t been properly deleted due to subs being private during blackouts. Many have experienced the same issue, I can’t explain how this happens. I’ll just run the script again, try the GDPR request and delete my account.
Also worth noting: according to the ToS Reddit can actually do whatever they want with existing content, apparently we agreed to this when signing up.
Worth noting is that a number of US states also have strong protection laws. So, delete you comments manually and then, if you’re really trying to ensure that they delete your data, submit a data removal request that cites your locale’s law on data removal.
Theeeeeen in 6 months or so, send a data retrieval request to make sure they followed through… and report them if they did not comply. Might as well make them pay for that data if they can’t follow the rules.
Assuming that this is, in fact, not legal and if they have money that can be gone after, I assume that someone may start a class action suit. In theory, they’re worth multiple billions, so…
An individual probably doesn’t care much about whatever harm is done, as the damage is too small. But this is the kind of thing where a lawyer can walk away with a big payday by aggregating cases of many users and then getting a percentage of any payout.
I am not at all certain that it is not legal, though.
undefined> In theory, they’re worth multiple billions, so…
wen Lambo?
In the US, indicate that you’re in California for the strongest legal option.
This could be worse than anything else they’ve done. If they claim they own the data, are they then not responsible for it like newspapers? Is it in their terms and conditions they are free to do whatever with posted information, do they have the rights to edit users comments but in doing so become a content provider and therefore responsible. Kicking mods out doesn’t land you in court this seems high risk to be manipulating content. Doesn’t matter why it was deleted or edited it was deleted or edited who gets to decide what version to restore. Either you are hands off or you own the data and are responsible for it and upheld to media standards.
Edit: found a snippit of the terms and conditions in a German GDPR thread, It appears it is their terms and conditions that after you post it they can do with it what they like, even adapt it. Either way that’s not a reason to be gone.
ToS like that does often not mean anything, they can write whatever they like but it doesn’t mean they can legally enforce it. So if you are an artist posting a painting you made, reddit can’t just say ‘oop, it’s ours now’ same with text
I picked up a permanent ban, after 15 years for saying ‘Go outside fatso’ to someone who said I couldnt read. Not my proudest moment, but there you go.
The reason I mention it, is that it adds a different dynamic if they are trying retain (and prevent me from editing) data which they hold about me. They might argue that doesn’t extend to post where I’ve written “cats > dogs” - but anything where I’ve refered to where I live, whether I have kids, what my political views are, are all clearly personal details which they are not allowed to hold without retaining my consent.
Clear contraventions on GDPR in EU.
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/eu-data-protection-rules_en
There was that kerfuffle ages ago about u/spez editing comments in r/thedonald, iirc. It’s not like it would be that much of a stretch for him at least.
But it looks like from OP’s edits it may be unintentional. I’ll withhold my rage for now.
This is shitty of them to do but this is what people have been trying to tell us since the dawn of the internet. Nothing on the internet is EVER truly deleted
I think they may underestimate EU’s response here.
DSGVO take the wheel
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Have a read through. It definitely relates to GDPR (and even the Right to be Forgotten). Those are our accounts, linked to our emails. It is content we generate (even Reddit admits the content is owned by the creator). So if I want to delete everything and leave no trace I should be able to.
https://www.cyberghostvpn.com/en_US/privacyhub/how-to-delete-reddit-account/
Those are our accounts, linked to our emails, which they are free to de-associate, and freely use for whatever commercial purposes they want.
That’s debatable. Sure. my account doesn’t actually contain my name and address, but it contains almost 14 years of posts and comments. Through the years I’ve probably let slip enough small pieces of information about myself that a motivated person would be able to identify me. This would still make it identifiable information.
Debatable? Yes, as that still hasn’t been figured out at a higher level, and this is still handled on a case-by-case basis. Otherwise, they are free to keep your data, and simply no longer keep the association with your email.
Sure. my account doesn’t actually contain my name and address, but it contains almost 14 years of posts and comments.
Agreed. If a person’s speaking voice falls under the GDPR (as I have found out being a phonetician and hence doing research on it), surely opinions and comments taken not individually but as a cumulated mass must do so too.
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Do you understand how trivial it is to anonymize the data so it can still be used and monetized?
How exactly do you trivially remove all references to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of the person posting?
This is the bar you’d have to clear to ensure someone’s comment history were anonymized per GDPR, miss a single one of these factors and your anonymous data is now reversible and thus infringing.
Yes but if they take the user name off can they keep the comment text up. For most comments they probably could unless you were putting your name or your job title and company or similar in the body of the text.
The data subjects are identifiable if they can be directly or indirectly identified, especially by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or one of several special characteristics
By definition commenting reddit users are covered, even if they haven’t posted anything otherwise identifying – but most have either way.
*Looks up GDPR… “EU law”
Womp womp :(
There is also CCPA in California - but none of these offer a total blanket/shield of protection like people are positing here. It’s still a completely grey area that has, so far, not sided with users of sites.
That’s not what an “online identifier” is under GDPR. Those are RFID tags, cookies, device fingerprints, IP addresses, etc: https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-30/
please don’t state things if you don’t know what you’re talking about. it absolutely applies. it’s a personalized account, with a personalized email address – this is the core of GDPR. it might not apply cause reddit is not within the legislation of the EU. maybe.
I do - I work with this daily. It would be a massive uphill battle to even prove in a court that your whole post history is considered “identifying”. It’s a case-by-base basis. On top of that, your data could still be easily stored and simply no longer associated with your email (but still can be kept if the previous cannot be proven about identification). Then this would have to be tested, on a that same case-by-case basis, for every single user that made a request.
To quote yourself, “please don’t state things if you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
ah … simply no. also now you’re going into technicalities and specific scenarios – which might make sense in court, yet doesn’t disprove the principle per se. but maybe let’s agree to disagree, i don’t think this goes somewhere.
If they have eu users they have to apply it. That is why many places have ip lock outs that just prevent us from.seeing it.
However if they truly anonymise the content of a post they can keep it
Doesn’t matter, they’ll be fined and if they refuse to pay they’ll not be allowed to operate in the EU
Can’t be fined for GDPR if you aren’t violating GDPR taps temple
That depends on the content of the post or comment, no?
If a user is commenting they have an online identifier and are thus covered. If a user has ever referenced their relationship status, location or any physical descriptor they are covered. The GDPR – it applies.
That’s not what an “online identifier” is under GDPR. Those are RFID tags, cookies, device fingerprints, IP addresses, etc: https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-30/
Usernames are online identifiers:
A non-exhaustive list is included in Recital 30
An individual’s social media ‘handle’ or username, which may seem anonymous or nonsensical, is still sufficient to identify them as it uniquely identifies that individual. The username is personal data if it distinguishes one individual from another regardless of whether it is possible to link the ‘online’ identity with a ‘real world’ named individual.
Certainly some of it can be.
Yes it is, as pointed out here https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/34112/Updated-Reddit-is-quietly-restoring-deleted-AND-overwritten-posts-and#entry-comment-140833 and here https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/34112/Updated-Reddit-is-quietly-restoring-deleted-AND-overwritten-posts-and#entry-comment-141285
And also see https://kbin.social/m/reddit@lemmy.ml/t/34167/Reddit-is-restoring-deleted-posts#entry-comment-141186
Yes it is, as pointed out here https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/34112/Updated-Reddit-is-quietly-restoring-deleted-AND-overwritten-posts-and#entry-comment-140833 and here https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/34112/Updated-Reddit-is-quietly-restoring-deleted-AND-overwritten-posts-and#entry-comment-141285
These links are just going to the same post we are on? It’s not linking to specific comments for me.
Looks like comment link redirection isn’t quite working. Let me just copy over the comment text for now:
Well, people have reported Twitter for failing to remove their tweets and places like the ICO are now actively investigating Twitter over this failure, see https://www.wired.co.uk/article/delete-twitter-dms-gdpr
Someone posted not too long ago that a person who was part of Twitter’s group over the GDPR - pre Musk - said the lawyers came to the conclusion that tweets were protected under the GDPR.
I believe it’s less straightforward than that. Under GDPR, consent can be withdrawn, you can’t give an irrevokable consent.
And from https://mstdn.games/@chris/110553477682106144
Presumably falls under right to erasure (art 17,19 of GDPR). You’ve withdrawn your consent, so if it isn’t exempt under legal obligation, public health, scientific research etc then that’s it, really. I guess there might be brave souls who argue that posts on Reddit sometimes don’t qualify as or contain personal data, but that would seem irrelevant unless someone is painstakingly anonymising the dataset on a case by case basis, which they surely aren’t.
Also, it looks like Twitter may be in some trouble, for failing to delete DMs under the GDPR, see https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/08/elon-musk-twitter-dm-deletion/
Surely, if twitter DMs fall under the GDPR, so do Reddit posts and comments (and note that it’s the content of the DMs, and not the personal identifiers, and that the DMs are requested to be deleted from e.g. receipients inboxes as well).
There is nothing of fact here - as I said in my comments before and I’ll say again - it’s a case-by-case basis, but as it stands, this is not covered under GDPR. Everything you linked to is pending actual decisions, as this area of GDPR is still being figured out. Yet, for some reason, people are stating it as fact.
as this area of GDPR is still being figured out.
Interesting. So does that mean you think it COULD be covered by the GDPR, perhaps from a court decision at a future date? That at least it’s a possibility, even if unknown right now?
this is not covered under GDPR
Interesting contradiction. I’d say there only three states: it is covered, it is not covered, and it’s unknown.
Anyways, here’s a fact:
UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office … told Veale that Twitter’s response “failed to comply with the requirement of the data protection legislation”
Of course you’d be right if you said it hasn’t been taken to court yet and that particular case lacks a court ruling to back it up. So if that’s your requirement for it to count, then that’s fair. Still, I would generally go with the guidance from the ICO here rather than try my luck in court, absent compelling reasons.
I think the case by case thing is addressed somewhat from the Mastodon post. Someone reposting a meme wouldn’t contain any personal info to erase under GDPR, but another post that’s an ask me anything with a person’s picture and other verifiable credentials would be. In the latter case I’m not sure you could anonymize the content without making it unuseful and uninteresting.
And it would take a lot of time and effort to review every post and comment and perform the anonymization. And deanonymization is a legitimate concern too. So I guess Reddit could try to play hardball here but it would probably cost them.
Personal data is any information that relates to an individual who can be directly or indirectly identified. Names and email addresses are obviously personal data. Location information, ethnicity, gender, biometric data, religious beliefs, web cookies, and political opinions can also be personal data. Pseudonymous data can also fall under the definition if it’s relatively easy to ID someone from it.
For most people, GDPR probably applies to at least some of their comments on Reddit.
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While this is true, it’s sort of like being in a car accident. The other person may be in the wrong, but that doesn’t exactly unwreck your car.
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Nothing on the internet is EVER truly deleted
That is such a shitty move. Forcing subreddits to go back up is one thing, but as a european this feels very wrong from a data ownership standpoint and I’m not sure it’s ok in the GDPR rules?
I think we should actively keep track of Reddit restoring user’s content without people’s permission. Screenshots, timestamps, everything. Monitor it all.
Maybe if Reddit go ahead with their API change whilst treating their users like such disposable crap, we could reach out to the EU to inform them of Reddit’s GDPR breaches. Maybe that’d lead to their new revenue from API charges disappearing into hefty EU fines.
Update: Maybe there’s going to be some loophole about actually having to use the data deletion request via Reddit’s UI for there to be an actually GDPR breach though thinking about it. Going to ask around some Law friends for advise
That’s an excellent idea! EU regulations on the digital rights of users are not to be trifled with, and “the right to be forgotten” is a big one.
Mightily envious of you guys over there.
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Yes, it does, and yes, there is, see https://kbin.social/m/reddit@lemmy.ml/t/34167/Reddit-is-restoring-deleted-posts#entry-comment-141186
You’re all over this thread saying this, what exactly do you think “right to erasure” means?
From gdpr.info:
Since the definition includes “any information,” one must assume that the term “personal data” should be as broadly interpreted as possible.
Here’s a short list of information thought not to be personal which has later been found personal:
- Start end/times at work
- Break times
- Cultural id markers
- Written answers to exam questions
- Mental illness
- Any physical descriptor
- online identifiers (ie your reddit username which may be shared with other sites to identify you)
- and plenty more
The idea that redditors do not have personal information lingering in their comments is absurd, GDPR 100% applies.
I’m not sure it’s ok in the GDPR rules?
That would probably be related to “right to erasure”.
But even this has limits, since sometimes the data can be necessary for a service (for example, you might be unable to get invoice data erased before X years, as a legal requirement)
Since messages on forums can be considered “needed” to understand a thread, it’s usually advised to make all messages anonymous if a user requests complete deletion.
I guess here it’s a little different, since the messages were removed by users, so it’s not a gdpr request. Not sure how it works in that case.
Other issue is if the messages themselves contain personal information… Someone going through my old reddit profile could probably figure out my identity since I mentioned one of my (very uncommon) previous job a few times.
Best way to figure out how it works here would probably be to contact the gdpr authority for your country… And they might have trouble with it too.
But even this has limits, since sometimes the data can be necessary for a service (for example, you might be unable to get invoice data erased before X years, as a legal requirement)
But then it still needs to be marked as a “DO NOT TOUCH”. you aren’t allowed to use it then for any other purpose.
@Anahkiasen @chri5 almost certainly no bueno under GDPR.
Post content being deemed PII at user digression is already a… questionable stance to take with GDPR but probably grey enough to the point where a DPA won’t bother with it while they have bigger fish to fry.
Outright going against user requested data removal tho? Yeah that’s a good way to net you GDPR complaints. If the user requests their info removed, you’re required to oblige unless you have a reason that amounts to something like “we need this to keep the service operational”, which post content almost certainly isn’t.
(ie. You’re not gonna be able to GDPR your IP address or email off of the banlist.)
Earlier this week I deleted all of my comments except for some in a private sub. I just checked and all the posts I deleted are back 🤬
Same
They really want to fuck around GDPR? Are they really Musk level morons?
There’s certainly no chance this will backfire…
That’s awful. I wonder if there’s a way to automate deleting all of our posts and replies—and repeatedly run it on a schedule via a cron job or something, maybe once an hour or something. And let it run until their API becomes locked down.
And then replace it with a Selenium script afterwards.
If only I know enough about programming to do it.
Right now, I’m looking at an option that I can run via command line here which I can add to my cron job queue.
@megane_kun I was thinking something very similar. I’m sure there are keywords they’re looking for too, like “third party apps” and “fuck /u/spez” which trigger the restore.
Probably, though from what I’ve seen in the linked thread, there’s no such keywords present.
What I suspect is that Reddit admins saw a rise in deletions, and put two and two together and thought it’s part of the protest. They’re not wrong, but still a dick move.
That’s not a bad idea actually. The Powerdelete script I used is based on Javascript and needs to be started manually in the browser window, I’ll just run the script once a day. But maybe someone with more knowledge can come up with a more automated solution. They can’t restore user accounts forever.
I’ve been using this for the last few years and letting it run once a month via cronjob:
https://github.com/jdbassa/Shreddit
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python-shreddit-gitI’m sure there are other and probably newer scripts out there, though.
That’s beyond fucked up.
But also very predictable.
I think it’s safe to say this fiasco isn’t going anywhere without a class action lawsuit or something.
There is EU and GDRP which reddit have to comply with.
Reddit CEO is a moron thinking they can avoid getting slapped with a fine.
I used Redact to schedule a daily deletion of my comments and posts. Hope it works. Also, I will report it.
I believe this is illegal for European (under GDPR).
Thats messed up! fuck spez!
Wow, out of everything that’s happened involving Reddit over the past few weeks, this to me is the most damning and deserves the most attention.
I’m really curious to see how they try to spin this in the next PR piece and what the reactions will be.
Would this actually be a GDPR breach? I was thinking about the right to erasure/to be forgotten earlier in relation to a post I saw about how your posts aren’t deleted on other federated instances, if you delete them on your home server. But I figured it wasn’t applicable because it’s not personal data and I’m thinking the same about this Reddit issue. Can anyone set me straight?
Well, people have reported Twitter for failing to remove their tweets and places like the ICO are now actively investigating Twitter over this failure, see https://www.wired.co.uk/article/delete-twitter-dms-gdpr
Someone posted not too long ago that a person who was part of Twitter’s group over the GDPR - pre Musk - said the lawyers came to the conclusion that tweets were protected under the GDPR.
Thanks, that’s a good point and sets a precedent. I had a reply in another thread with the definition of personal data from GDPR and it would seem to include social media posts:
‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
https://kbin.social/m/reddit@lemmy.ml/t/34167/Reddit-is-restoring-deleted-posts#entry-comment-141186
Motherfucker! I just checked my profile, and they DID restore the posts I edited+deleted with PowerDeleteSuite. Thankfully it’s just the posts from the past week or so, I had deleted my entire 8 year history before that, and that stayed deleted. I’m assuming they monitored other API access calls past the days where the blackout started to restore those.
Same here. I’m a 12 year account on Reddit and I had been in the habit of deleting my history regularly due to an ex that likes to stalk my posts. Everything recent that I deleted this week is back but the stuff I deleted prior to that is still gone.
I just went back and edited it all again to state it’s been removed in protest in favor of moving to the fediverse.
